New ballparks, new fans

Urban cores revived by Triple-A ball

NASHVILLE — At a weeknight game in early June, nearly 7,500 people packed into downtown’s First Tennessee Park for Triple-A baseball in a stadium acclaimed for attracting new fans and driving a flurry of mixed-use development, turning a once-ignored sector of the city into one of Nashville’s hottest neighborhoods.

The crowd was a diverse mix of families, couples, and millennials — the latter, a group that Nashville Sounds owner Frank Ward wanted to attract. Only in its second season, the stadium in the historic Sulphur Dell still has the sheen of a new park. All around it are signs of an urban renaissance.

New apartment complexes stand beyond the outfield fence, with balconies providing a clear view of the game for residents, who have flocked to the densely developed, walkable neighborhood radiating from the ballpark.

Nearby are bars and restaurants, parks, an enclosed farmers market and a grocery store. Near the home plate entrance, construction crews worked on another housing project, and plans call for more multifamily developments that will all but encircle the stadium.

That model — a stadium surrounded by dense development where people can “live, work and play” — is what San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor envisions as she pushes for a similar ballpark somewhere downtown.

Increasingly, cities are rejecting suburbs and turning to their urban cores for new minor-and major-league sports facilities. Leaders see them as catalysts for economic development and magnets for a generation of young workers who pick the cities where they want to live based, at least partly, on entertainment offerings.

In April, Taylor surprised even some of her council colleagues when she announced that she’d struck a deal with David Elmore — whose Elmore Sports Group owns a battery of minor-league clubs, including the Double-A San Antonio Missions — to move his Triple-A franchise to San Antonio, provided the city builds a new stadium in the urban core.

Taylor and Elmore are targeting 2019 for the inaugural season for the Triple-A team, which would move from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and likely keep the Missions name.

For her, though, it’s not about merely building a new baseball park.

San Antonio has already done that once for Elmore, two decades ago. But the 6,200-seat Nelson Wolff Municipal Stadium sits on the Southwest Side, far removed from the central city. When it was built, there was more activity in the area, including an active military base and a Levi’s factory. These days, there’s little nearby that benefits from the fans who trek to the stadium. Most people drive to the stadium along Highway 90, pay to park on site, and leave immediately after the game.

The Missions broke a Texas League attendance record in 1994, with 411,989 fans over that season. Since then attendance has declined substantially. In 2005, the team’s average attendance was 3,899 with 272,922 fans for the season. Between the 2010 and 2014 seasons, the Missions were at the bottom of the league for average attendance. Last season, the franchise climbed out of the basement, finishing sixth out of eight teams on average attendance.

The vast majority of those fans drive to the stadium along Highway 90, pay to park on site, and leave immediately after the game.

Taylor’s plan would offer fans a more complete experience.

“That’s where we can realize all those other opportunities for additional development but also for the experience to be enhanced — because it’s not just about the destination of going to that facility to see that game and then walking to your car in a parking lot and leaving,” Taylor said. “Instead, it’s about being a part of the overall community, the experience of being downtown, going to a restaurant.

“It’s all extremely experiential,” she continued, “and I just don’t think we can capture that being in a sea of parking in the ‘burbs somewhere.”

Taylor wants a downtown stadium that not only houses a Triple-A team but also serves as a public space and medium-sized outdoor venue for non-sports events.

She is quick to note that she’s not trying to placate the tourism industry. Rather, she’s fixed on ensuring that San Antonians have a family-friendly, affordable place to watch America’s Pastime — and more. The stadium and surrounding mixed-use development would help both retain and attract new young professionals to San Antonio’s urban core, she said.

“I’m looking at it as an anchor for redevelopment,” Taylor said. “When you look at the projects in other cities, they’re by renovated buildings, new apartments, sometimes park space and other things that allow families to have a holistic experience.”

Martin DiNitto, an architect who’s been designing baseball stadiums for decades, said urban ballparks are successful when they’re “the gasoline on the fire of a broader downtown redevelopment picture.”

‘If you build it, it will happen’

In Nashville, officials keyed in on an area north of downtown for the new stadium where some development was under way.

“We felt that it could be a catalyst tying what really were just parking lots to the sort of growing Germantown area, which has since that time just exploded in terms of growth with restaurants, bars and residential development,” said Rich Riebeling, Nashville’s chief operating officer. “It’s sort of, ‘If you build it, it will happen.’ Well, it really has happened here.”

The Nashville park faced some opposition, Riebeling said. But in the end, most of the outspoken opponents came around, and even attended Opening Day at the park last year in the inaugural season.

Taylor, too, is facing opposition. Some critics don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on a sports facility; others think San Antonio is shooting too low and should lobby for a Major League team.

Initially saying she would consider the 2017 municipal bond program as a funding source, Taylor has since killed that idea, leaving unanswered questions about how the city would fund its portion of the cost. According to DiNitto, that could be in the $60 million to $75 million range, not including land acquisition costs.

Officials have said the city could cover half the cost, with the balance funded by developers, Bexar County, the team and through a naming-rights deal.

Burl Yarborough, president of the San Antonio Missions, said the Elmore Sports Group would have some “skin in the game,” but until more specifics emerge from the city, it’s uncertain how that structure may look.

Though countless hurdles remain, Taylor has said she’s committed to making Triple-A baseball a reality — in a new, downtown stadium, for the 2019 season. Sources say city officials have narrowed potential locations to just one or two spots, and the city is expected to release more details about the proposal this summer.

And despite ruling out the 2017 bond program for funding, Taylor hasn’t ruled out a public vote on the matter.

In El Paso, voters approved increasing the city’s hotel occupancy tax to back bonds for the construction of its stadium. In Nashville, the Metro Council approved a bond sale and designed a complex financing structure that ultimately cost taxpayers $345,000 a year in new spending.

In Memphis, the team’s then-owner — a nonprofit run by a local philanthropist — worked a complex deal that included the sale of bonds. Ultimately, the deal went south and the city spent $24 million to bail out the stadium while the franchise’s Major League counterpart, the St. Louis Cardinals, bought the team.

The idea of a stadium nestled within an urban core isn’t new. In Frisco and El Paso; Washington, D.C.; Memphis; and Charlotte, North Carolina, such urban development has grown adjacent to both minor-and major-league stadiums. Increasingly, those facilities are opening up more and more to the public — outside of ball games.

Once completed, a greenbelt behind the Nashville Sounds’ stadium will offer access to picnic areas overlooking the park. In Memphis, a public square, accessible even without a ticket to the game, sits within the footprint of AutoZone Park, where the Redbirds play.

In both Tennessee cities, there are bars and restaurants nearby — places where fans might grab a bite, along with a cold beer or cocktail before the game, afterward, or both. Other stadiums, ballpark experts say, have playgrounds, walking trails and other amenities the public can access even outside of games.

The fan experience

In many places, baseball — especially in the minor leagues — is no longer a game only for purists and families seeking an affordable and friendly outing. Franchises have long employed various tactics to attract folks to the park, whether it’s fireworks after weekend games or a bobblehead doll giveaway. But some places are going beyond those traditional gimmicks to attract a new set of fans.

Frank Ward, the owner of the Nashville Sounds, has figured it out. The real estate magnate, now in his early 70s, credits his son for shifting his thinking on how to bring the millennial generation through the turnstiles.

Since the 1970s, pro baseball in Nashville was played at Greer Stadium, located south of downtown in an area marked by parking lots and industrial buildings. When the city upgraded from Double-A to Triple A — before Ward owned the team — the franchise added thousands of seats to the Double-A stadium to reach minimum seating requirements for the highest level of the minors.

“When we bought the team in 2008, Greer was a disaster. We put $3.5 million into it, and it was putting lipstick on a pig,” Ward said. “It was still a disaster but not as bad of a disaster as when we bought (the Sounds).”

The ballpark appealed to baseball fanatics, Ward said, and “mom and pop with the kids, out for a Sunday afternoon,” but there was a key demographic missing.

“We didn’t have the young people,” he said.

Now, young professionals flock to the park, and some even watch the games. For others, though, First Tennessee Park is a place to congregate, a place to visit with friends, where there just happens to be baseball games being played.

Ward credits the “Band Box” — the area past first base, along the right-field line, for attracting new fans. It’s an impressive space, anchored by an open-air bar serving up craft beer, cocktails and a specialty — the $10 Whiskey and Coke Icee. Between the bar and the foul line are several half-moon tables where groups of four can sit together — and easily talk to each other — while still watching the game.

The area also has a few Ping-Pong tables and several sets of cornhole — a game in which players try to toss beanbags through a hole in an angled board — and shuffleboard, the version played on cruise ships, not in bars. There are plush chairs and chaise lounges, and board games scattered about. This month, a nine-hole putt-putt golf course, designed by local artists, is expected to open.

“I do appreciate that there are other things I can do besides watch baseball,” said Lyndsey Godwin, who was at the park for her friend’s birthday. The group had taken over a cornhole set next to the bar and had no intention on watching any baseball.

It’s people like that that Ward wanted to add to his clientele.

“The Band Box is a hit beyond our wildest imagination,” Ward said. “On a good night, you’ll have the millennials out there. They’ll have no idea there’s a baseball game going on — they don’t really care, but they’re having a great time.”

Fans, young and old, still pack into traditional seats and watch the game. When the Sounds were stomping the Round Rock Express, one fan was working on perfecting his heckling skills, targeting Express pitcher Kyle Lohse, 37, who’s thrown more than 2,500 innings in Major League Baseball since 2001.

For years, Nashville officials had acknowledged the need for a new stadium and had a deal in place with Ward’s predecessor, who teamed with a developer who’d planned a massive project adjacent to the proposed facility that was expected to fund the ballpark. The complex deal was initially delayed and ultimately fell apart before a shovel of dirt was turned.

Eventually, a new plan came about under then-Mayor Karl Dean, who proposed the site north of downtown, near Germantown. Freddie O’Connell, the councilman who represents the area around the stadium, said his district has both million-dollar penthouses and the highest per-capita poverty rate of the entire metro area.

Ward said he thought the site was a terrible idea.

“And the mayor — I’ll give him credit, I initially fought him on this location eight years ago… people didn’t want to go north of the city,” Ward said. “He had the vision to say, ‘Put it there, and it will work.’ It changed the whole dynamics of the area.”

A catalyst for development

And it did, agreed Justin Hagemeier, a charter pilot who relocated to Nashville with his wife for work. The two had always lived either in sprawling suburbs or rural areas but decided to sell one of their cars and take up urban living in Germantown. He stopped to talk about the change in lifestyle while out walking his dog, Mac.

The stadium “seems like it’s spurred a lot of redevelopment,” he said, noting that “this area has become cool again.”

“They’re building like crazy around here,” he said. But it wasn’t always that way. The neighborhood used to be a dilapidated industrial area plagued by crime. Now the area is hopping, and real estate prices are climbing to a “ridiculous” level, he said.

“I wish we could stay here longer, but I think the real estate prices are out of range for us,” he said. Houses are often bought within 24 hours of being listed and for higher than the asking price, he said, and 750 square-foot studio apartments are leasing for $1,400 to $1,600 a month.

Around the corner, Ian Revereza was celebrating the one-year anniversary of his latest venture, Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint, which opened around the same time as First Tennessee Park. The place is packed before and after Sounds games, he said.

“Five, 10 years ago, you didn’t come to this neighborhood,” he said. “It was all industrial. This was the slums, essentially.”

Now, Revereza lives in an apartment just a couple blocks away from his restaurant. He said everything he needs is in the neighborhood, and he drives out about once a week.

Riebeling, the Nashville COO, said he can’t keep up with the announcements of bars and restaurants opening in the area.

“Did the ballpark do it all? No, of course not,” he said. “But did it help? I think it gives that area an identity and really helped solidify decisions to invest in that area.”

Success in Memphis

Some 16 years ago, on the other side of the state, AutoZone Park opened in downtown Memphis. By all accounts, it was one of the nicest Triple-A stadiums ever built. Since then, the ballpark has driven significant new development and revitalization of once-decrepit downtown structures, albeit at a slower pace than other places.

Its success hasn’t gone unnoticed.

At a Tuesday event hosted jointly by the local chapters of the American Institute of Architects and the Urban Land Institute, Janet Marie Smith — an architect and urban planner who has worked on stadium projects for the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox — helped visualize the pattern of development near the stadium, displaying side-by-side photos of AutoZone Park initially flanked by surface parking lots before they became the sites of apartment complexes.

Now the stadium is surrounded by apartments, hotels and office buildings. The Fielder Square Apartments, which consume much of the real estate beyond the wall between center-right and the right-field line, have dozens of balconies that offer vistas of the field. And they’re not just attracting young professionals.

Mary Sue Ercoli and her husband relocated to Memphis for his work, and after raising their children in the suburbs, the empty nesters wanted a taste of urban living.

“You can walk to everything,” she said. “It’s fantastic.”

Their third-floor patio at Fielder Square overlooks the stadium, and the couple watches at least some of most home games — from their home. The beer and hot dogs are cheaper in their apartment, Ercoli joked. Their Fielder Square apartment complex also has a deck in right field that gives them a view, and residents can get complimentary tickets from the complex office.

On the other side of the stadium, an old building on the left-field line was recently converted into living space. The Pressbox Lofts also have roof seating for tenants. Development is occurring all around AutoZone Park, which is just a few blocks from the FedEx Forum, where the city’s NBA team plays.

There are plans for three hotels — one already under construction — adjacent to the ballpark, and other construction projects, both new construction and rehabilitation, are under way.

“Once we built AutoZone Park downtown, everything started to explode,” Councilman Berlin Boyd said. “We saw improvements in the whole downtown core, as far as companies and businesses redeveloping old buildings adjacent and close to the stadium. So we really sparked a lot of new development.”

Redbirds General Manager Craig Unger agreed.

“There’s been so much resurgence,” he said. “People say AutoZone Park relaunched downtown.”

The struggles that Memphis has faced comes from inside the walls that encapsulate AutoZone Park. The award-winning stadium, with its red-brick walls and dark-green siding, strikes visitors as an intimate Major League Park. Unger said the stadium was built to major-league specifications to prove to the league that Memphis could support its own MLB team.

Originally, the stadium had nearly 15,000 fixed seats and 48 luxury suites. The team has since ripped out thousands of chairs and built grassy knolls in their place. The franchise has converted some of the suites to bars and open-air clubhouses for fans.

Picnic tables, pool tables, and all-you-can-eat buffets are among the offerings the Redbirds now use to attract fans. Unger, who wasn’t involved in the planning and construction of the park, said officials considering new facilities need to be thoughtful about how they approach the endeavor.

“My thing is build it for now,” he said. “They built this stadium for the future and that’s really what came back to bite them. It was too big. It had too much capacity. It had too many things. Build it for the now, because you will make adjustments along the way.”

Memphis finished its 2015 season with the lowest average attendance in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League at 4,037 over 69 home games. Midway through the 2016 season, the team is ranked third from last with a 4,707 average over 39 home games.

By contrast, the Nashville Sounds are averaging 6,786 this season and averaged nearly 8,000 in the 2015 season. The El Paso Chihuahuas and Round Rock Express hover at the top of the list, the latter averaging more than 8,500 per game this season.

The International League’s Charlotte Knights are pulling in nearly 9,000 per game this season and averaged 9,428 in 2015 — the top of either of the Triple-A leagues. By contrast, the lowest average attendance for a Major League Baseball team in 2015 was the Tampa Bay Rays, averaging 15,403. The L.A. Dodgers topped the league with average attendance of 46,479.

In 2014, the Knights’ inaugural season in the new facility, the team averaged more than 9,600 a game. The prior year, the team was in the bottom of the league with 3,803. And the Nashville Sounds experienced a similar turnaround. In 2014, the year before the new stadium opened, average attendance was 4,909.

It’s clear that the new urban stadiums are drawing in more fans. Ward, the owner of the Sounds, said San Antonio can be successful, too, as long as it builds new.

“You want Triple A? Build a new facility,” he said. “Don’t try to take a Double-A stadium and somehow make it a Triple-A facility.”